Venice rewards the walker who slows down. Not the rush between famous sights, but the streets in between: a carved saint in a passage, a garden sensed behind a wall, a bridge named for something the city would rather forget.
Venice Field Notes are short, close-up guides to single stretches of the city – a few hundred metres at a time, taken from the walks in 17 Walks in Venice and the campi of The Fabric of Venice. Each one follows the route on the ground, points out what is easily missed, and explains a little of why it is there.
New notes are added regularly. Start with any that catches your eye – each stands on its own.
Campo San Polo Diversion
Out of the campo, over the canal, and back past a winged lion and a watchful Hercules: a short diversion to Palazzo Albrizzi, the palazzo that saves its splendour for the inside.
A stroll along the Zattere
From the sun-warmed Zattere to a doge’s palazzo: the closing stretch of the Salute Walk, by way of the Gesuati, Tiepolo’s painted sky, and quiet Campo Sant’Agnese.
Veronese’s Parish: San Sebastiano to Palazzina Briati in Quiet Dorsoduro
Paolo Veronese’s parish church, an archangel with a fish, and a column from ancient Greece — a short slice of the Veronese Walk along the quiet fondamente of western Dorsoduro.
Formosa Walk: Calle del Paradiso to Campo San Lio
A slice of the Formosa Walk in Castello, from the Gothic arch of Calle del Paradiso through quiet parish lanes to Santa Maria della Fava and Campo San Lio – passing Canaletto’s front door on the way to his grave.
Goldoni Walk: Meet the Characters – Manin, the Moors, Giustina Rossi and Tommaso Rangone
Four Venetians in a few hundred metres: a patriot buried in the side of the basilica, two bronze bell-strikers on the clock tower, a woman remembered for one well-aimed mortar, and a physician who put himself on a church façade.
San Tomà and the Shoemakers: from the Vaporetto to Casa Goldoni
The San Polo Walk opens quietly: a guild hall with shoes carved over the door, a senator asleep in stone above a side entrance, and the palazzo where Goldoni was born. A short first leg from the Grand Canal to Ponte San Tomà.
San Canzian to Santa Maria dei Miracoli
Venice keeps its luck in odd places. Here it hangs on a wall beside a bridge: a pair of old iron anchors, polished by generations
Tolentino Walk: Rio Marin to San Simeone Profeta
A short stretch of the Tolentino Walk through quiet Santa Croce, from the canal-side palazzo of Henry James’s The Aspern Papers to the layered church of San Simeone Profeta – and a pair of worn Byzantine lions guarding a courtyard door.